Our harmony downloads are proving popular so here’s another Jazz Harmony PDF.
This sheet is titled “Practise Worksheet – intermediate” but it’s vital for all serious Jazz/Commercial pianists to know these chords inside out.

The first exercise is a simple series of II-V-I progressions in closed position, around a cycle of fifths. These are vital and even if I’m playing a weird large chord with loads of extensions and no root-I’m still am aware of the closed position voicing underneath it all!

When this is familiar, move on to the next exercise which then opens out these chords using an interval of a fifth in the base and adding the 3rd and 7th (or 7th and 3rd) above.
These voicings are absolutely vital to good jazz piano and indeed, good arranging. This style of opening out a simple chord uses the least amount of notes (in Jazz harmony) to the greatest effect.
The next exercise goes on to add extensions to these chords, utilising a bass note in the left hand and chord in the right.

The final exercise is to play the previous chord shapes in the left hand with the intention of leaving the bass notes to the bass player so as to allow the right hand to improvise.
There we have it-most of Jazz harmony, all on a single sheet of paper!

Jazz Harmony PDF download 

We’ve just uploaded our second free royalty free music audio pack.
This pack of 10 free loops and stings is completely free to use in non-profit works and there’s no need to even register-just visit the page and download.
These free loops and stings are all in CD quality, 44.1khz WAV files.
Obviously, if you use our music we’d really appreciate a mention or link in your webpage or blog.

Enjoy

We had a fun job this week, to provide the brass arrangement for top producer Michael Gray.
“You Got Me Twisted” is a great crossover Dance track, with -as you woud expect-superb production values.
He needed a riff from a Michael Jackson track transcribed, transposed and arranged for trumpet.
We altered the original to fit the rhythmic style and it was a pretty simple job musically, but when you arrange for studio sessions there’s always different things to consider than arranging for live music.

One thing that I always like to do is to notate the “drop in” times on the part. This is the time from the start in minutes and seconds at each prominant section of the arrangement. This makes it easier for the arranger and producer to know exactly where each section is-  musically and from a recording point of view.
Ok, we didn’t actually need it this time but it’s always best to cover every base rather than waste time/money on a session.

When you arrange for recording musicians you can also add more parts than you could live so we had 3 trumpet parts which we then recorded using different mikes. Essentially the part only need a single trumpet but we used 2 on the top octave and doubled the part an octave below to thicken the sound. The producer now has a minimum of 6 tracks to mix as he likes.

We’re delighted to introduce a new young composer to SMARTassMusic- Jon Cooper.
Jon’s composing style is synth based ambient music …….and I know what you’re thinking……”we’ve heard that a million times before!” BUT………..these tracks are full of style, subtlety and great production quality and I’ve found myself listening to them when doing site maintenance. 

My personal favourites are:
Alpha - a really beautiful, enticing ambient, atmospheric track Neuromancer and Suspension.

In fact, we think that this music makes perfect atmospheric underscores so we’ve put a collection together of 12 electronic, ambient background tracks “Ambient Underscores“.
This collection of 12 full royalty free ambient  tracks is £59.99 which is a saving of over £100 if you bought them individually!

We’re adding lots of great new music at the moment so don’t forget to view the “new tracks” section and we’ll try to keep you updated here too

In case you didn’t realise – we posted our first “Free Audio Pack“  at various software download sites at the end of 2008.
This pack contains 8 completely free loops and stings in high quality WAV files.
These free music loops are simple to download and import into any multimedia production and are completely free for use in non-profit productions. The pack also contains information, links and license terms.
We’ve now made this pack available for download directly from the SMARTassMusic website on our updated “free royalty free music” page. From here you can access members only free music or download our free audio packs without the need to register.

We’ll soon be releasing our second Free royalty free music audio pack which should contain 12 high quality loops and stings. We’ll update you first from the blog, so watch this space

Our blog’s been quiet over the holiday period but while many of you have been putting your feet up, we’ve been really busy behind the scenes.

We’ve upgraded our servers, improved our payment system and added lots of great new music.

We also managed to fit in a TV ad commission from Miami. The company had found a track they liked but they needed something very specific. We recreated the style and then changed it to fit the video exactly. The 24 hour  turnaraound made life quite interesting but Tedi and Debi were a pleasure to work with. Thanks guys
We’ll post shortly with details of new music, new composers and more free music!
Have a good 2009